


Waking Up

by fitz_y



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Angst, Canon Het Relationship, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Infidelity, One of My Favorites, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-26
Updated: 2011-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:28:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitz_y/pseuds/fitz_y
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1950s AU. Gwen leaves it all behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waking Up

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to my valiant beta [](http://yllenk.livejournal.com/profile)[**yllenk**](http://yllenk.livejournal.com/)!
> 
> Written, very belatedly, for the [“Screw you, canon!” Merlin Art/Ficathon](http://users.livejournal.com/midnightdream__/175572.html), for this [prompt](http://users.livejournal.com/midnightdream__/175572.html?thread=999124#t999124): Prompt: "I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds." Gwen/anyone canon ruined her with.  
> At first, I wanted to make it Gwen/everybody canon ruined her with, but then Morgana just took over, as she is wont to do.
> 
> Podfic by sophinisba available [here](http://sophinisba.dreamwidth.org/356588.html?view=3656428)  
> 

\--with apologies to J. Kerouac

A hotel in Spokane. 1954.

It was more than the fogginess that sometime accompanies waking up in a strange bed, tensing against a hangover and wondering how you got there, or the momentary confusion brought on by jet lag and an unfamiliar hotel room. She started awake to blankness, utter nothingness. She stared at the redness on the windowpane, the crack in the high ceiling and asked herself who she was. Someone moved about behind the wall next to her head, turning on a shower, forcing the protesting, clanging pipes to life. Outside, voices flowed, children’s high pitches, whining at the early hour, at some unaccountable parental injustice; the reluctant turning over of a car motor. Gwen lay there unmoving under the stiff white hotel sheet, registering the details clearly, but missing the point.

Sometimes, she thought, your mind doesn’t want to know anymore. Sometimes it just wipes itself clean for a few precious, lovely seconds. And she felt herself as just one more beating heart resting in a room under the wide blue sky.

She turned her head on the pillow, watched her fingers curl slowly. The heavy gold band on her ring finger stared at her, jolting her back into the memory of two nights ago, of Arthur’s face.

_“If you go after her, then you’re never welcome back in my house.” My house, he had said, not our house._

She slipped out of the bed, wondering what kind of traces she would be leaving on this room, wondering what kind of traces this room would leave on her. On the floor lay the leather suitcase with her initials engraved in gold lettering, _G.S.P._ , a present for their honeymoon. She knelt before it, feeling the indented letters with the pad of her finger.

_“But I loved you first. Before he even noticed you. I loved you first,” Morgana had mouthed against the tender inside of Gwen’s thigh._

_“I love you more,” she had hissed as she bit and licked at the soft bit of skin below Gwen’s hip._

_“I love you most,” she had whispered, turning her green eyes up to bore into Gwen’s, before pressing her shoulders against her legs, planting her mouth over the ache between Gwen’s thighs. Morgana always took what she wanted._

000\. Gwen lined up the numbers to unlock the suitcase. Collared shirts, pencil skirts, ruffled blouses, her lilac flowered tea dress, the checkered blazer, one pair of trousers—haphazardly crammed into the small space, not folded, not rolled with care. Not packed by the Pendragon maid who had arranged her clothing, pressed into ruler-straight lines, packed at right angles, for the honeymoon to Hawaii. These were the last of her possessions now, she thought numbly as she pushed a curl out of her eyes.

_“Morgana, this has to stop,” she had begged, her voiced scratchy and rough with desire, her fingers twisting in Morgana’s soft wavy hair. Morgana had not responded, only nuzzled deeper into the curls between Gwen’s thighs._

_“You can’t just show up . . . after ten months and expect things to go back to the way they were. I’m married now; I’m married to your brother, damn it, listen to me.” She had yanked hard, dislodging Morgana’s head, running her fingers over the juice and spit tracing down Morgana’s chin, digging her nails into the soft flesh under Morgana’s jaw, forcing her to look up. “Why did you leave?”_

_Morgana had narrowed her eyes, glancing away, refusing to meet Gwen’s gaze. “And while I was gone, you wasted no time in moving on with Arthur,” she had bitten out._

_“No, it wasn’t like that.” Gwen had dug her fingers harder into Morgana’s jawline, strongly enough to leave little half-moon marks. “We were concerned for you, we tried so hard to find you. I had no one else to turn to, no one else who could help me. You just disappeared. God, I didn’t even know if you were alive,” she had choked out, feeling the familiar tension closing her throat._

_Morgana had crawled up on the bed so she sat close, her hand still possessively resting high on the inside of Gwen’s thigh._

_“I’m sure he was oh-so tender, and oh-so comforting,” she had drawled before pushing Gwen backwards onto the bed, before invading Gwen’s mouth with the thick taste of her own sex._

Gwen extracted a crinkled knee-length A-line skirt, a white short-sleeved button down, and a blue neckerchief. She trailed over to the closet and hauled out the heavy iron and ironing board, plugged it in and set it to high. Mechanically, she walked to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face. Again and again, inhaling sharply against the icy sting on her skin.

_And then there had been no more words. No more accusations, no more questions, no more back and forth. Then there had just been Morgana’s fingers filling her, Morgana’s mouth overwhelming her, the ends of Morgana’s hair trailing over her belly, Morgana’s breath skittering over her skin, Morgana’s body under her hands; Morgana taking her in all the ways she knew how to, Morgana refusing to let her hold back, Morgana proving everything._

Gwen stared at the reflection in the mirror, distantly noticing the flattened hair, the bloodshot whites surrounding dark pupils, the twitching muscle under her left eye. The gaze that met her in the mirror revealed nothing. She stared longer, waiting to feel something.

_It had probably been what Morgana had wanted all along, to best her younger brother, to embarrass him, to show him that she could still take what she wanted, even if it belonged to him now._

_Hours before he was due home, he had burst into the master bedroom, finding them still flushed and panting, naked and open in the dying afternoon sunlight._

Gwen returned to the bedroom, feeling the scratch of the short carpet under her bare feet, noticing the cigarette burns spotting the area around the bed. Moving by rote, she ironed the shirt and then the skirt, pressing out the wrinkles, smoothing it to perfection.

She dressed in silence, pausing to listen to the rumble of a truck on the highway. She tied the neckerchief in a jaunty knot, a stripe of blue over the red blot on her throat.

_Morgana had dressed slowly, smirking at Arthur as she had snapped on her bra, stepped her long legs into lacy underwear. The muscle in his jaw jumped as he had stared concertedly at the polished wood floor, meeting neither woman’s eyes._

_Zipping up her tight skirt, Morgana had brushed against Arthur. “Cheer up, little brother, now that I got what I came for, I’ll leave you two alone again.”_

_“Morgana, where are you . . .” Gwen had swallowed her words when Arthur had glared at her, his eyes icy cold and still, like the bottom of the sea._

She slipped the band off her finger, felt its warm weight in her palm.

_”She needs our help, Arthur. She’s not well. And if we just let her run off again, who knows how she may end up.”_

_“She does not need our saving, Gwen. She’s an adult, she’s making her own decisions.”_

_“No, listen to me, you can’t just let her go again. Don’t you care about your sister?”_

_“I care more about my wife.”_

_“You can’t just let her go like this! You can’t. Please.” A word that always felt like ash in her mouth when she said it to him, when she admitted the power that he held in his hands._

If she took the ring to a pawnshop, she might get a few hundred for it. She had also packed the pearl earrings Arthur had given her for the wedding three months ago. Delicate and soft like her ears, he had said, running his finger over the curve of her earlobe.

She slipped the ring into the inner pocket of her purse, alongside the earrings.

Spokane. The man at the train station had said that Morgana had purchased a ticket for Spokane, Washington. And now Gwen was here, in this town she had never thought of as more than a dot on the map until two days ago.

She pinned her hair into a knot so tight it pulled at her scalp, snapped up her suitcase, folded away the ironing board and iron, smoothed down the sheets of the bed.

Judging from the state of the room now, she could almost believe that she had never been here, that she was just another transient passing through, leaving no dreams, no marks, that she was nameless, faceless now, just another lover breaking off from the present, searching for the past.  



End file.
